Glossary:DirectX/DirectDraw troubleshooting
In Windows 7, Vista and XP some older games have an odd color issue. Harsh basic colors will appear in different areas, particularly in black portions of the screen in many games designed for Windows 95 such as Command & Conquer and Age of Empires II. While the games remain playable, the bad coloration can be found to be distracting.
Cause
This issue appears to be caused by how more recent versions of Explorer.exe render graphics. This is evidenced by how taking a screenshot of an affected game will show just the discoloration with black where the other game assets would be rendered and by the fix itself.
Fixes
The most basic fix is to kill the Explorer.exe process either before running the application via the command line or alt-tabbing out of the program and then killing the Explorer.exe process.
Scripted Fix
The fix can be scripted with a BAT file which will kill Explorer.exe, run the game in question, and then restart Explorer.exe once you have exited the game. Below is an example. Where the text between the square brackets describes the text.
REM -[ScriptName].bat taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe [Path to game executable] start explorer.exe
You can place the BAT file on the desktop for some games, but others require that it be in the same folder as the EXE. In those cases, only use the executable name in place of the entire path and create a shortcut on your desktop to the executable.